Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1887-05-30
FREAKS OF THE INSANE.
SOME OF THE LuDIcRouS EXPRESS
SloNS OF THE DEMENTED.

Unconscious Comicality OF Crazy JOkers.
Nothing Too Absurd to BE Believed by
a Lunatic-Ingenuity of nIonomaniacs.
Extravagant Fancy.
Some lunatics even deliberately assume
the role Of jokers. They make horrible
puns, ask conundrums and get off poor
witticisms. But it is their unconscious
comicality that makes them most laugh
able; and its effect is doubled by the
gravity of mien and tone with which they
utter their whimsical conceits, and which
every lecturer of the humorous species
must envy them. One day, when the
present writer was attending lecture on
mental diseases in an asylum, the pro-
fessor brought in n patient suffering from
iIaasions-i. e., his imagination distorted
everything he saw into something differ
ent. s'Where are your the professor
asked the patient. "In a menagerien
was the answer. "And what are these
beings?n the professor asked, pointing to
the students The answer was consistent:
"I4ions and tigers and bears" When the
students laughed aloud at this unexpected
geological diagnosis, the patient insisted
that the animals were now roaring"
Frequently patients consider themselves
partially or entirely transformed into ami
mails or superior beings. One woman
mentioned by Krafft-Ebing insisted that
her feet had been changed into hoofs and
her head into an ox's head. A young man
became convinced in the course of his dis
ease that he was the devil, so he refused
to take food in order to starve the fiend.
An Austrian patient insisted that he had
lost his eyes, and wanted to go to London
to get new pair. Being retained against
his will he refused to eat anything on the
ground that Bismarck had poisoned his
food and that million gods had warned
him against it.
NOTHING Is TOO ABSURD.
1t often happens, as in dreams, that in
animate objects appear to the patient to
be alive. A tower opposite an aged luna
tics window was taken by him for the
''world soul.n One day he saw the tower
move away, and q voice came from it
which cursed him for having destroyed
the worldl Nothing is too absurd to be
believed by the demented. One patient
having maltreated another, was taken to
task and questioned as to his motive. He
finally confessed that the other man
'wanted to come into my ward to bui.d a
chimney six miles high, and pushed nm
down stairs" ''In one case that was un-
der my charge, says DIR. Hammond, 1.-THE
patient, stationer, doing business in this
city, had the delusion that unknown enc
-Freemasons--were acting on him
by electricity, which they sent into his
brain, through the top of his head, by
powerful batteries which they had in their
lodge rooms. In another woman = + y
conceived that all the iron ratings and
railway tracks had been charged with
electricity in order to injure her.
Great ingenuity is often shown by mono
maniacs in trying to justify their ludicrous
beliefs. DR.. Hammond knew a man who
believed that his right hand was made of
glass, and who therefore carried it in a
stout case, to prevent its being broken.
When the doctor tried to convince him
that his hand was flesh and blood, and not
glass, he retorted: II once thought just as
you do My brain was then incapable of
appreciating minute differences as well as
it can now; and, though / confess that my
senses still convey to me the idea that my
hand is like other peoples, yet / know
that the conception is erroneous, and cor
rect it at once by my reason. My hand
looks like flesh and blood, but it's glass.
for all that Nothing is more calculated
to deceive than the senses"